This volume re-publishes The Hexagon Story as part of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance’s (CSNR) Classics series. The introductory information explains how this history of the Hexagon program focuses on the Air Force involvement with the program as it became operational and matured and contains limited discussion of the early Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contributions to development of the program.

Find the story 10 August 2012 

See the pictures 10 August 2012 

Mit Spionagesatelliten kundschafteten die USA während des Kalten Krieges die Militärgeheimnisse des Gegners aus. Dann stürzte plötzlich eine Kapsel mit Überwachungsfotos in den Pazifik – und eine panische Rettungsaktion begann. 40 Jahre später hat der CIA die spektakulären Bilder der Operation freigegen. Neun Monate und mehr als 100.000 Dollar hatte die CIA investiert – und alles, was die Geheimdienstler schließlich in Händen hielten, war ein verwischtes Foto. Wer wollte, sah Puderzucker auf einem dunklen Tisch oder die ersten Schreibversuche eines Kindes. Nur ganz entfernt erinnerte das Foto an das, was es eigentlich war: ein Luftbild, fotografiert von einem Satelliten. Das Foto war von KH-9 Hexagon aufgenommen worden, einem Spionagesatelliten, den die USA am 15. Juni 1971 ins All geschickt hatten. Der unsichtbare Knipser war eine Hightech-Waffe im Kalten Krieg, mit ihm sollten die militärischen Geheimnisse der Sowjetunion festgehalten werden: Häfen, Werften, Flugplätze, Radaranlagen. Jedenfalls war das der Plan. KH-9 Hexagon war neben den beiden Kameras auch mit vier Kapseln ausgerüstet, die die hochauflösenden High-Definition-Aerial-Filme des Typs 1414 der Firma Eastman Kodak zurück zum Boden befördern sollten. Das Transportprinzip war so genial wie spektakulär: Die Kapseln lösten sich vom Satelliten und fielen Richtung Erde. Irgendwann öffnete sich ein Fallschirm, die Fotofracht wurde abgebremst und schließlich mitten in der Luft von einer Militärmaschine eingesammelt. Doch schon bei der ersten Mission von KH-9 kam es am 10. Juli 1971 zu einer verhängnisvollen Panne: Der Fallschirm öffnete sich nicht. Statt eingefangen zu werden, stürzte die Kapsel mit der Bezeichnung RV 1201-3 bei Hawaii in den Pazifik. Wenig später begannen CIA, der Militärnachrichtendienst NRO und die US Navy mit der Suche nach dem versunkenen Schatz. Doch warum dauerte die Bergung fast neun Monate? Und was passierte genau in jener Zeit? Die CIA hat nach 40 Jahren jetzt Akten freigegeben, die einen seltenen Einblick in die Arbeit des Geheimdienstes bieten – und spektakuläre Fotos einer Mission zeigen, die beinahe gescheitert wäre. Auffällige Luftblasen In einem internen Geheimdienst-Memo vom Tag des Unfalls wird zunächst von einem Helikopter berichtet, der den Bremsfallschirm gesichtet habe. Und: Militärmaschinen hätten Funksignale der Kapsel empfangen – doch schon im nächsten Telegramm folgt die Ernüchterung: Die Funksignale stammen nicht von der Kapsel, sondern von einem Flugzeug. Die Suche an der mutmaßlichen Aufprallstelle wird ergebnislos abgebrochen. Während die Fotokapseln RV 1 und 2 sicher aufgenommen wurden, fehlt von Nummer 3 zunächst jede Spur. Erst die Meldung einer Militärmaschine über auffallend viele Luftblasen auf dem Ozean bringt eine erste Spur. Schließlich können die Koordinaten der Absturzstelle ungefähr festgestellt werden: 24 Grad 50 Minuten nördliche Breite. 164 Grad 0 Minuten westliche Länge. Zwei Wochen sind seit der Panne vergangen. Weitere zwei Wochen später steht ein grober Rettungsplan. In einem Memo an den Direktor des Militärnachrichtendienstes wird das Vermessungsschiff “USNS DeSteiguer” genannt, das in der Lage sei, “ein Suchgerät mehr als 20.000 Fuß in die Tiefe zu lassen.” Die Suche durchführen soll ein Expertenteam des Marine-Physik-Labors MPL – für die Bergung fällt in dem Memo der Name des Hightech-Tauchboots “Trieste II”, das seit 1964 für die Marine im Einsatz ist. Bergung in 5000 Metern Tiefe Vier Tage Suchzeit plant das NRO für die “DeSteiguer” ein, unmittelbar danach soll das bemannte Tauchboot den wertvollen Geheimnisträger sichern. Beginnen soll das Unternehmen am 1. Oktober 1971. Doch auch dieses Datum ist bald Makulatur. Erst im Dezember geht die “Trieste II” auf Tauchfahrt, sichtet die Kapsel – und kann doch nicht bergen. Stürme mit 40 bis 50 Knoten und mehr als vier Meter hohe Wellen peitschen über den Pazifik. Die Bergung der so wichtigen Fotokapsel hat fast schon komische Züge angenommen, als die Sicherung von RV 3 schließlich auf März 1972 verschoben wird. Grund dafür ist nicht das Wetter, sondern die anstehende Nachfolge-Satellitenmission “1202”. Wegen der seien auch die Druck-Kapazitäten beim Kooperationspartner Eastman Kodak “bis Februar 1972 belegt”, heißt es in einem Geheimschreiben vom Dezember 1971. Kodak hätte also ohnehin keine Zeit für die Fotos der versunkenen Kapsel. …

Find this story at 13 August 2012 Eingereicht von: Christian Gödecke © SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet GmbH

BOSTON — More than 30 federal officers in an airport program intended to spot telltale mannerisms of potential terrorists say the operation has become a magnet for racial profiling, targeting not only Middle Easterners but also blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

In interviews and internal complaints, officers from the Transportation Security Administration’s “behavior detection” program at Logan International Airport in Boston asserted that passengers who fit certain profiles — Hispanics traveling to Miami, for instance, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward — are much more likely to be stopped, searched and questioned for “suspicious” behavior.

“They just pull aside anyone who they don’t like the way they look — if they are black and have expensive clothes or jewelry, or if they are Hispanic,” said one white officer, who along with four others spoke with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity.

The T.S.A. said on Friday that it had opened an investigation into the claims.

While the Obama administration has attacked the use of racial and ethnic profiling in Arizona and elsewhere, the claims by the Boston officers now put the agency and the administration in the awkward position of defending themselves against charges of profiling in a program billed as a model for airports nationwide.

At a meeting last month with T.S.A. officials, officers at Logan provided written complaints about profiling from 32 officers, some of whom wrote anonymously. Officers said managers’ demands for high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals had led co-workers to target minorities in the belief that those stops were more likely to yield drugs, outstanding arrest warrants or immigration problems.

The practice has become so prevalent, some officers said, that Massachusetts State Police officials have asked why minority members appear to make up an overwhelming number of the cases that the airport refers to them.

“The behavior detection program is no longer a behavior-based program, but it is a racial profiling program,” one officer wrote in an anonymous complaint obtained by The Times.

A T.S.A. spokesman said agency inspectors recently learned of the racial profiling claims in Boston. “If any of these claims prove accurate, we will take immediate and decisive action to ensure there are consequences to such activity,” the statement said.

The agency emphasized that the behavior detection program “in no way encourages or tolerates profiling” and bans singling out passengers based on nationality, race, ethnicity or religion.

It is unusual for transportation agency employees to come forward with this kind of claim against co-workers, and the large number of employees bringing complaints in Boston could prove particularly damaging for an agency already buffeted with criticism over pat-downs, X-ray scans and other security measures.

Reports of profiling emerged last year at the behavior programs at the Newark and Hawaii airports, but in much smaller numbers than those described in Boston.

The complaints from the Logan officers carry nationwide implications because Boston is the testing ground for an expanded use of behavioral detection methods at airports around the country.

While 161 airports already use behavioral officers to identify possible terrorist activity — a controversial tactic — the agency is considering expanding the use of what it says are more advanced tactics nationwide, with Boston’s program as a model.

The program in place in Boston uses specially trained behavioral “assessors” not only to scan the lines of passengers for unusual activity, but also to speak individually with each passenger and gauge their reactions while asking about their trip or for other information.

The assessors look for inconsistencies in the answers and other signs of unusual behavior, like avoiding eye contact, sweating or fidgeting, officials said. A passenger considered to be acting suspiciously can be pulled from the line and subjected to more intensive questioning.

That is what happened last month at Logan airport to Kenneth Boatner, 68, a psychologist and educational consultant in Boston who was traveling to Atlanta for a business trip.

In a formal complaint he filed with the agency afterward, he said he was pulled out of line and detained for 29 minutes as agents thumbed through his checkbook and examined his clients’ clinical notes, his cellphone and other belongings.

The officers gave no explanation, but Dr. Boatner, who is black, said he suspected the reason he was stopped was his race and appearance. He was wearing sweat pants, a white T-shirt and high-top sneakers.

He said he felt humiliated. “I had never been subjected to anything like that,” he said in an interview.

Officers in Boston acknowledged that they had no firm data on how frequently minority members were stopped. But based on their own observations, several officers estimated that they accounted for as many as 80 percent of passengers searched during certain shifts.

The officers identified nearly two dozen co-workers who they said consistently focused on stopping minority members in response to pressure from managers to meet certain threshold numbers for referrals to the State Police, federal immigration officials or other agencies.

The stops were seen as a way of padding the program’s numbers and demonstrating to Washington policy makers that the behavior program was producing results, several officers said.

Instead, the officers said, profiling undermined the usefulness of the program. Focusing on minority members, said a second officer who was interviewed by The Times, “takes officers away from the real threat, and we could miss a terrorist we are looking for.”

Some Boston officers went to the American Civil Liberties Union with their complaints of profiling, and Sarah Wunsch, a lawyer in the group’s Boston office, interviewed eight officers.

“Selecting people based on race or ethnicity was a way of finding easy marks,” she said. “It was a notch in your belt.”

The transportation agency said it did not collect information on the race or ethnicity of travelers and could not provide such a breakdown of passengers stopped through the behavior program.

But the agency defended the program’s overall value. Behavior detection “is clearly an effective means of identifying people engaged in activity that may threaten the security of the passengers and the airports and has become a very effective intelligence tool, enabling law enforcement to bust larger operations and track any trends in nefarious activity,” the agency said in its statement.

“In addition, the deterrent value of the program can’t be overstated,” it said. Monitoring passengers’ behavior “adds another layer of security to the airport environment and presents the terrorists with yet one more challenge they need to overcome” in their efforts to defeat airport security measures, the agency said.

But government analysts and some researchers say the idea of spotting possible terrorists from their behavior in a security line relies on dubious science.

A critical assessment of the program in 2010 by the Government Accountability Office noted that aviation officials began the behavior program in 2003, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, without first determining if it had a scientific basis.

Nine years later, this question remains largely unanswered, even as the agency moves to expand the program, the accountability office said in a follow-up report last year. It said that until the agency is able to better study and document the validity of the science, Congress might consider freezing tens of millions of dollars budgeted for the program’s growth.

Based on past research, the accountability office said the link between a person’s behavior and mental state is strongest in reading “simple emotions” like happiness and sadness.

…

Read this article at 11 August 2012

August 11, 2012

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ERIC LICHTBLAU

© 2012 The New York Times Company

Sieben Monate lang hortete das sächsische Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz Geheimakten – ohne dass ein Verantwortlicher davon erfuhr. Das hat jetzt den Präsidenten der Behörde, Reinhard Boos, zum Rücktritt gezwungen. Er ist der dritte hochrangige Verfassungsschützer, den die NSU-Affäre das Amt kostet.

Seine Ladung für eine Anhörung im Untersuchungsausschuss des Sächsischen Landtags zum “Nationalsozialistischen Untergrund” (NSU) war längst beantragt: Jetzt gewinnt der für September geplante Auftritt von Reinhard Boos vor dem Gremium besondere Brisanz. Sachsens Innenminister Markus Ulbig (CDU) gab am Mittwoch vor dem Landtag in Dresden bekannt, dass Boos um 23 Uhr am Abend zuvor von seinem Amt des Präsidenten des sächsischen Landesamtes für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) zurückgetreten sei.

Es ist der dritte Rücktritt eines Verfassungsschutzchefs im Zusammenhang mit dem Neonazi-Terror: Zuvor musste Heinz Fromm, Präsident des Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz, gehen. Thüringen schickte seinen Verfassungsschutzchef Thomas Sippel in den vorläufigen Ruhestand. Nordrhein-Westfalens Verfassungsschutzchefin Mathilde Koller hatte aus persönlichen Gründen, wie sie sagte, um ihre Versetzung in den Ruhestand gebeten.

Es gehe um eklatantes Fehlverhalten einzelner Mitarbeiter des sächsischen Verfassungsschutzes, sagte Ulbig. Und um einen “überaus peinlichen Vorgang”, wie es die SPD-Innenexpertin Sabine Friedel formulierte.

Seit sieben Monaten läuft die Aufklärung eines beispiellosen Verbrechens in Deutschland – rechtsextremistische Terroristen haben zehn Menschen getötet – und der Verfassungsschutz in Dresden hortete offenbar Geheimakten, die für die Aufklärung dringend notwendig sein können.

Erst jetzt seien Protokolle des Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz zu einer Überwachung von Ende 1998 aufgetaucht, sagte Ulbig – Unterlagen zum rechtsterroristischen NSU-Komplex also, die längst als verloren galten und nicht in die parlamentarische Kontrolle miteinbezogen wurden. Es geht um Protokolle einer Telefonüberwachung, die das Landesamt im Auftrag des Bundesamtes angefertigt hat. Gerüchten zufolge soll es sich um Akten handeln, die das Bundesamt bereits geschreddert hat.

Was genau in den Protokollen festgehalten wurde, ist noch unklar. Die Telefonüberwachung selbst sei zwar in Berichten an die Parlamentarische Kontrollkommission (PKK) Sachsens berücksichtigt worden. Neu sei aber, dass im Landesamt noch Protokolle dieser Überwachung existierten, hieß es.

Welche Brisanz haben die Akten? “Schwer zu sagen – immerhin lösen sie den Rücktritt des Präsidenten aus”, sagt Kerstin Köditz, Landtagsabgeordnete der Linken. Man könnte meinen, der Fund der Akten sei positiv: Die aufgetauchten Informationen könnten die Arbeit der Untersuchungsausschüsse und die NSU-Ermittlungen insgesamt voranbringen. Wäre dies der Fall, bleibt die Frage, warum Boos dennoch umgehend zurücktrat. Nur weil seine Behörde Unterlagen zurückhielt? Unter Abgeordneten hält sich der Verdacht, es könnten noch größere Versäumnisse dahinterstecken.

Gegen Mitarbeiter des sächsischen Verfassungsschutzes seien unverzüglich disziplinarische Schritte eingeleitet worden, sagte Ulbig, der wiederholt beteuert hatte, dass Sachsen alle Dokumente veröffentlicht habe.

Bauernopfer Boos

Somit kann man Boos auch als Bauernopfer sehen. Dieser bedaure diesen Vorfall zutiefst und sei tief enttäuscht, berichtete der Minister. Unter diesen Umständen könne er das Amt nicht mehr mit dem gebotenen Vertrauen weiter führen, habe Boos ihm gesagt. Ulbig betonte aber, dass Boos als Präsident des LfV die Aufklärung zum Fallkomplex NSU “von Beginn an unterstützt und sein Ehrenwort für eine umfassende Aufklärung” gegeben habe.

Boos, 55, geboren in Iserlohn, ist seit August 1992 in Sachsen im Öffentlichen Dienst. Von 1999 bis 2002 war er schon einmal Präsident des sächsischen Verfassungsschutzes, wechselte dann ins Dresdner Innenministerium, 2007 kehrte er als Präsident des LfV zurück. Vor wenigen Wochen hatte er einem Journalisten auf die Frage, ob er sich nach den Abgängen seiner Amtskollegen im Bund und in Thüringen einsam fühle, geantwortet: “Wie ich mich fühle? Wunderbar.”

Anfang Juli – mitten in der Debatte um das Versagen deutscher Sicherheitsbehörden im Fall des NSU-Terrortrios – hatte sich Innenminister Ulbig bei der Präsentation des Jahresberichts 2011 noch hinter seinen Verfassungsschutzchef gestellt – und erneut dem Verfassungsschutz des Nachbarlandes Thüringen die Schuld in die Schuhe geschoben. Dieser habe bei der Zielfahndung nach den Rechtsterroristen die Federführung innegehabt, nicht die Sachsen. Den einzigen Vorwurf, den Ulbig damals gelten ließ: Man habe sich auf die Kollegen verlassen – und das leider unkritisch.

Immer wieder hatte Boos beteuert, dass seine Behörde keine Erkenntnisse im Ermittlungsverfahren gegen die Zwickauer Terrorzelle zurückgehalten habe, alle Anfragen des Bundeskriminalamtes (BKA) seien “umfassend beantwortet worden”. Diese Fragen bezogen sich auf André E., der nach Aufdeckung der NSU-Morde am 24. November kurzzeitig festgenommen worden war.

“Ein überaus peinlicher Vorgang”

Es gab Gerüchte, dass der sächsische Verfassungsschutz einen Informanten geschützt habe, Boos dementierte vehement. Weder André E. noch weiter im Ermittlungsverfahren beschuldigte Personen seien V-Männer oder Informanten des Landesamtes in Sachsen gewesen. André E. sei dem Amt lediglich als Teilnehmer eines rechtsextremen Konzerts im Mai 2011 in Mecklenburg bekannt gewesen, mehr Angaben zu ihm habe man nicht.

Tatsächlich aber gilt André E. aus Johanngeorgenstadt als wichtige Figur in der sächsischen Neonazi-Szene, sein Zwillingsbruder Maik taucht im brandenburgischen Verfassungsschutzbericht von 2010 als “Stützpunkt”-Vertreter der NPD-Jugendorganisation auf.

Beide galten in der Szene als gefährlich und gewaltbereit. In den Resten des abgebrannten Wohnmobils der NSU-Zelle fanden Ermittler BahnCards auf André E.s Namen und den seiner Frau Susann, die von Beate Zschäpe und Uwe Böhnhardt benutzt und von E. selbst bezahlt worden sein sollen. Laut “Berliner Zeitung” soll der Verfassungsschutz dreimal versucht haben, André E. als V-Mann anzuwerben.

“Der ganze Vorgang beweist, dass Sachsen sieben Monate lang keine wirkliche Aufklärung betrieben hat, und diese Akten nicht in die Untersuchung miteinbezogen wurden”, sagt SPD-Innenexpertin Friedel.

…

Find this story at 11 July 2012

11. Juli 2012, 15:30 Uhr

Von Julia Jüttner

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
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Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet GmbH

Seine Aussagen lassen erahnen, wie anstrengend Helmut Roewer sein kann. Der Ex-Chef des Thüringer Verfassungsschutzes lobt sich vor dem Neonazi-Untersuchungsausschuss in den höchsten Tönen, gibt sich bockig, will von Fehlern nichts wissen. Ex-Mitarbeiter sprechen von “menschenverachtendem” Umgang.

Helmut Roewer trägt himbeerrote Schuhe. Und wenn man seinen ehemaligen Untergebenen Glauben schenken mag, kann man froh sein, dass er überhaupt welche trägt, als er am Montag im Untersuchungsausschuss des Thüringer Landtags zum “Nationalsozialistischen Untergrund” (NSU) in Erfurt den Saal betritt.

Mehr als sieben Stunden lang hatten zuvor zwei ehemalige Verfassungsschützer Einblick in das Chaos gegeben, über das Roewer in seiner Zeit als Präsident des Landesamtes für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) herrschte. Roewer war von 1994 bis 2000 Chef der Behörde, dann wurde er wegen einer Reihe von Affären suspendiert.

Wie ein “balzender Auerhahn” habe Roewer eines Abends in seinem Büro mit sechs Mitarbeiterinnen an drei zusammengeschobenen Schreibtischen gesessen, die Jalousien unten, bei Kerzenschein, Rotwein und Käse, berichtet Karl Friedrich Schrader, einst Referatsleiter 22, Abteilung Rechtsextremismus. “Sie lachen darüber”, ruft Schrader den Landtagsabgeordneten zu, “heute lache ich auch darüber, aber damals war das nicht zum Lachen!”

Schrader, 67, ist ein braungebrannter, redseliger Mann mit schneeweißem Schnauzer, dunklen Augenbrauen und Janker. 37 Jahre lang war er bei der Polizei, als Roewer ihn zum Verfassungsschutz holte, ihn neben dem Referatsleiter zum Personalratsvorsitzenden machte, und ihm versprach, er könne dort vor der Rente noch einmal richtig Karriere machen. So erzählt es Schrader vor dem Untersuchungsausschuss. Die Zusammenarbeit der beiden endete mit einem Hausverbot für Schrader, der inzwischen zwei Monate im Jahr als Jäger- und Farmverwalter in Namibia weilt.

Beschwerden über Roewers Führungsstil

Schrader beschreibt Roewer als unberechenbaren Vorgesetzten, der in “menschenverachtender Form” über seine Mitarbeiter geherrscht habe. Er selbst sei aus dem Urlaub zurückgekehrt und seine Stelle war gestrichen. Wenn es Ärger mit einem Referatsleiter gegeben habe, habe Roewer das Referat aufgelöst und Kritik mit demselben Satz abgebügelt: “Ich führe das Amt!”

Es sei auch vorgekommen, dass Roewer ihn empfangen habe, die nackten Füße auf dem Tisch, verdreckt vom Barfußlaufen, sagt Schrader. Ein anderes Mal sei Roewer mit dem Fahrrad durch den sechsten Stock geradelt. “Da dachte man: In welchem Laden arbeitet man da?”

Wie anstrengend Roewer sein kann, kann man erahnen, als er am Montag um halb sieben vor den Untersuchungsausschuss tritt. Er ist der wichtigste Zeuge. Ein schmächtiges Männchen, die dunklen Haare über die Glatze am Hinterkopf gekämmt. Mehr als vier Stunden hat er auf seine Befragung warten müssen, die Stimmung ist entsprechend. Trotz mürrischer Miene wirkt es so, als würde er das Blitzlichtgewitter und die Aufmerksamkeit der vielen Kameras genießen.

Er sei 63 Jahre alt, ledig, Schriftsteller und wohne in Weimar, sagt Roewer. Und ihm wäre es lieb, wenn man ihm Fragen stellen würde, auf einen abendfüllenden Vortrag sei er nämlich nicht vorbereitet. Klare Ansage. Und das ist auch schon die längste Passage, die Roewer am Stück spricht, meist gibt er Ein-Wort-Antworten. Seine bockige, widerspenstige Art bei der Anhörung verlangt den Befragern, aber auch den Zuschauern reichlich Geduld ab. Es geht konkret um den Zeitraum zwischen 1994 und 1998, also bevor die Neonazis Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos und Beate Zschäpe in den Untergrund abtauchten. Die Zeit nach 1998 wird der Ausschuss im Herbst bearbeiten.

“Ich galt als Spitzenkraft. So ist das”

Der Rechtsextremismus war bereits ein Problem, als Roewer im April 1994 vom Bundesinnenministerium in Bonn nach Thüringen kam. Und noch mehr das Amt selbst. Keine einzige Person dort habe die erforderlichen Voraussetzungen erfüllt – “außer mir”, behauptet Roewer. Es ist eine gnadenlose Abrechnung mit seinen ehemaligen Mitarbeitern. “Ein Teil wurde fortgebildet, der andere Teil war nicht fortbildungsfähig. Das waren die hartnäckigsten. Denn gute Leute finden immer einen Job, dumme nicht.”

Eine Weisheit folgt auf die andere. Er habe nach Anweisung des Innenministeriums das Amt neu strukturieren müssen, sagt er. “Aber gute Leute können in jeder Gliederung arbeiten, nicht so gute in keiner.” Sich selbst lobt Roewer in höchsten Tönen. “Ich hatte Erfahrung auf dem Gebiet des Verfassungsschutzes, ich galt als Spitzenkraft. So ist das.”

Von Versäumnissen, Fehlern, Pannen will der ehemalige Präsident des Thüringer Verfassungsschutzes nichts hören. Den Verdacht, seine Behörde habe damals V-Leute vor Polizeimaßnahmen gewarnt, weist er empört von sich. Dabei war es ausgerechnet Tino Brandt, ein angeblich von Roewer angeworbener V-Mann, der bei einer Durchsuchung um 6 Uhr morgens die Beamten erwartete – mit einem Computer, bei dem gerade die Festplatte ausgebaut worden war, wie die Ausschussvorsitzende Dorothea Marx (SPD) ihm vorhält.

V-Mann mit Narrenfreiheit

Immer wieder landet das Gremium bei Brandt, der in den Akten als V-Mann 2045, Deckname “Otto”, geführt wird: Er war der wichtigste V-Mann, den der Thüringer Verfassungsschutz damals in der Szene hatte, wenn nicht sogar der einzige. Ein weiterer ehemaliger Verfassungsschützer, Norbert Wiesner, berichtet am Montag von den Schwierigkeiten beim Anwerben von Spitzeln, meist sei die Zusammenarbeit an der Unzuverlässigkeit der potentiellen Kandidaten gescheitert. Gerade im Skinhead-Bereich habe man fortwährend das gleiche Problem gehabt: “Die besaufen sich und können sich dann am nächsten Tag an nichts mehr erinnern.”

Brandt, der Neonazi aus Rudolstadt, genoss Narrenfreiheit unter Roewer. Mehrfach sei er massiv darauf hingewiesen worden, sein Engagement bei der NPD herunterzufahren, berichtet am Montag Wiesner. Brandt aber ignorierte die Ansagen.

Im Gegenteil: Nach seiner Enttarnung prahlte er damit, wie er die Behörde ausgetrickst und mit den 100.000 Euro, die er kassiert hatte, die Szene aufbaute. Vor dem Neonazi-Ausschuss in Erfurt erklärt Wiesner, Brandt habe ständig neue Handys und Computer gefordert und Ersatz für die Autos, die er zu Schrott fuhr.

Über Brandt reden alle an diesem Montag – nur Roewer nicht. Die Behörde habe 1994 “überhaupt nicht” über eigene Erkenntnisse verfügt, sagt er stattdessen. Um dies abzustellen, habe man ihn geholt. “Eine führungsstarke und durchsetzungskräftige Persönlichkeit war gesucht – ich.” An Selbstbewusstsein fehlt es dem kleinen Mann nicht im Geringsten, stolz betet er seine Vita herunter, spricht von “sehr guten Noten” im ersten und zweiten Jura-Staatsexamen.

Amnesie-Schub bei Roewer

Kurz nach Roewers Dienstantritt in Erfurt kam es zum Buchenwald-Skandal: Böhnhardt und Mundlos marschierten in braunen SA-Uniformen durch die Gedenkstätte. Niemand ahnte damals, dass die beiden in den folgenden Jahren neun Migranten und eine Polizistin töten werden, eine beispiellose Mordserie in der Geschichte Deutschlands.

Umso schlimmer, dass Roewer – wenn es stimmt, was er sagt – die Situation damals richtig einschätzte: Er sieht die Anti-Antifa als Zentrum der rechtsextremen Bewegung, die Gründung des Thüringer Heimatschutzes (THS) beobachtet er argwöhnisch, hält sie für “die militanteste Organisation von allen Kameradschaften in Thüringen”, wie er am Montag behauptet. Erst recht, weil THS-Mitglieder die NPD unterwandern. Er habe sich im Mai 2000 für ein Verbot des Heimatschutzes eingesetzt, sagt er, angeblich vergeblich.

Befragt zur “Operation Rennsteig”, bei der das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz ab 1997 gemeinsam mit den Thüringer Kollegen zwölf V-Leute im THS gewinnen konnte, befällt Roewer ein Amnesie-Schub. “Ich habe keine konkreten Erinnerungen”, redet er sich heraus. Auch an den ominösen V-Mann Günther, den keiner in der Behörde kannte außer ihm und der 40.800 Mark kassierte, will sich Roewer nicht wirklich erinnern.

Roewers Auftritt am Montag ist mühselig: Wie er sich feiert und auf Erinnerungslücken beruft, wenn ihn die beiden Linken-Abgeordneten Martina Renner und Katharina König in die Mangel nehmen. Candle-Light-Dinner und Radausflüge im Büro streitet er ebenso ab wie willkürliche Personalentscheidungen. Wer lügt? “Einer sagt die Unwahrheit”, konstatiert König und beantragt Vereidigung.

…

Find this story at 10 July 2012

10. Juli 2012, 07:28 Uhr

Von Julia Jüttner, Erfurt

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet GmbH

A scandal over a botched probe of ten murders blamed on German neo-Nazis felled the third top official this month as the head of a state intelligence service stepped down Wednesday.
Mystery deepens – did agent aid murder? – National (5 Jul 12)
File shredding scandal leads to security reform – National (4 Jul 12)
Intelligence chief resigns over mistakes – National (2 Jul 12)

Reinhard Boos, the head of the secret service bureau in the eastern state of Saxony, resigned in an affair that last week claimed Germany’s domestic intelligence chief after his office admitted to shredding key files.

Heinz Fromm, president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), resigned last week after 12 years in charge while the leader of Thuringia’ bureau, Thomas Sippel, was also dismissed.

The Thuringia bureau has been branded the “chaos office” by German media this week, following testimony from Sippel’s predecessor Helmut Roewer, who was reportedly prone to revealing confidential information in his office during impromptu wine and cheese parties.

A colleague also testified that during his tenure from 1994 to 2000, Roewer wandered around the office barefoot, chatted about top secret sources in the kitchen, and once rode a bike around the sixth floor of the building.

Roewer himself testified he was too drunk to remember who handed him the envelope that contained his own appointment in 1994.

Roewer was still in charge when the neo-Nazi terror trio Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt und Beate Zschäpe disappeared in the late 1990s before their murder series began.

Saxony’s Interior Minister Markus Ulbig said that the state security services had only recently learned that they had transcripts from wiretapped telephone calls related to the neo-Nazi probe dating from 1998.

“The reason this fact only came to light now is apparently linked to the gross misconduct of individual staff members,” Ulbig told the state legislature.

“The president (of the Saxony state intelligence service) deeply regrets this occurrence which is why he has asked me to give him another post from August 1 of this year.”

Ulbig said he had ordered the transcripts to be reviewed and sent to federal prosecutors to aid their ongoing investigation of the murders, mainly of Turkish-born shopkeepers throughout Germany between 2000 and 2007. Boos had led the office since 2007 and also between 1999 and 2002.

It emerged in November that a far-right trio calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU) was likely behind the murder spree.

The case broke open only when two members of the NSU were found dead in an apparent suicide pact and the other, a woman, turned herself in.

Investigators initially suspected criminal elements from the Turkish community were behind the rash of killings in a probe marked by repeated missteps and allegations of a cover-up.

A parliamentary committee is investigating the affair and the German government has pledged a root-and-branch reform of the security services.

Find this story at 11 July 2012

Published: 11 Jul 12 15:23 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120711-43699.html

AFP/The Local/bk

Family accuses Met Police of whitewash and racism and awaits result of a third inquiry

Scotland Yard has been accused of a “cover up” after it emerged that its own review into the controversial death of a man believed to be an informant did not address key evidence which suggested officers bungled the investigation.

Kester David, 53, was found burned to death under railway arches in north London two years ago. Police concluded that he had committed suicide, but his family claim that he was murdered, possibly connected to him being a police informant, and that detectives failed to carry out a proper investigation because he was black.

In response, Inspector Brian Casson conducted an internal inquiry into the initial investigation. He found that officers had made a “catalogue of errors” that amounted to “a failing in duty”.

However, The Independent has established that the Met then ordered another review, carried out in March this year by DSI Keith Dobson, which did not address Casson’s findings.

Dobson’s report, obtained by The Independent, says: “I have not discovered anything which would have altered the ‘course and direction’ of the original investigation or alter the conclusions and findings which are documented by the investigators and experts involved…Based on all the information supplied to me I concur with that conclusion.”

Last night Mr David’s brother Roger Griffith described the Dobson report as an attempted “whitewash” by the Met and part of a sustained attempt to cover up the failings of the original detectives, whom he believes were motivated by racism.

He said: “The Dobson report was a cover up which ignored everything Casson found and concluded that the original investigation was a good job. It was a complete whitewash.”

He added: “How is it right that two police officers who failed us so tragically are still on the streets? They seemed hell bent on not investigating and putting forward that it was suicide…The two officers should be suspended now, so that no other mother has to go through what our mum has been put through.”

An inquest into Mr David’s death recorded an open verdict in January 2011 amid unanswered questions and a missing DNA report. After the critical Casson report was leaked to the press, Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe ordered a new inquiry, which is still ongoing.

Inspector Casson, who was investigating the family’s complaints, found two key witnesses who had called 999 with evidence that pointed to foul play, but were never interviewed by the detectives.

One man, who was awake feeding his baby daughter, reported hearing two screams of ‘no’ by a man who sounded panicked, frightened and in pain at 4.20am. He was first interviewed by the Inspector Casson – almost 18 months after the incident.

The second caller was a Morrisson’s supermarket night shift worker who had seen a white Mercedes van in the car park, which borders the Travis Perkin yard where Mr David was found, and two men walking towards the yard at 3.45am. He had never before seen a vehicle in the car park at that time of night. The CCTV footage was never recovered.

Mr David’s burnt body was found without shoes but there was a pair of white Reebok trainers found close-by, which his family said did not belong to him. The detectives concluded that they were his because, they told the coroner, DNA taken from the shoes “would have” belonged to a close relative. This was not true; there is no mention of a close relative in the excerpt of the DNA report quoted by Casson, the same report apparently lost by the detectives so never seen by the coroner or family.

The forensic scientist actually found two DNA profiles, one was dominant so most likely belonged to regular wearer of the shoes, but this was not run against the police DNA database. Casson’s inquiry found that it was perfect match to a white man from the travelling community.

At the inquest, Detective Kirk told the coroner that the CCTV footage showing Mr David buying a canister of petrol a few hour before he is believed to have died, pointed to a planned suicide. The inquest was not shown footage from a few minutes later which showed an RAC van attend as Mr David’s car had broken down because it was out of fuel. This footage was “not discovered” by the original investigation.

Casson also found that crucial mobile phone analysis was not done.

The Casson report recommended “a severity assessment” be conducted in light of his findings. Even the Dobson report recommends they are “considered for local management action” because of the insensitivities shown to the family and the inaccurate information they passed on. But both still remain on full duty.

They family do not understand why the IPCC, which is currently investigating five alleged cases of racism, decided not to get involved pending the outcome of the criminal investigation. The IPCC said it was reviewing this decision following the family’s request not to delay the investigation.

The Met did not comment on Mr Griffith’s view that the Dobson report was a whitewash and an attempt to cover up the actions of racist officers but said: “There is a fresh on-going investigation into the death of Kester David by the Specialist Crime and Operations Directorate (SC&O1)… detectives retain an open mind about the circumstances surrounding the incident.

“An investigation into an unexplained death of this nature is reviewed as a matter of course after 28 days, usually internally, but in this case by an external police force ensure Mr David’s family is as reassured as they can be about the effectiveness of our investigative process.”

She added: “The investigation into this complaint has not been completed… the Directorate of Professional Standards awaits the outcome of the [criminal] investigation. No action has been taken against any officer at this stage. No disciplinary action can be considered until SC&O1 have finalised their investigation.”

Timeline: Kester David Case

7 July 2010 Kester David dies around 4am. His burnt body is found under railway arches of Palmers Green station, north London, at 11am.

…

Find this story at 7 July 2012 

Nina Lakhani
Saturday, 7 July 2012

© independent.co.uk

DENVER — As Chris Lindley drove to work that morning in August 2008, a call set his heart pounding.

The Democratic National Convention was being held in Denver, and Barack Obama was to accept his party’s presidential nomination before a crowd of 80,000 people that night.

The phone call was from one of Lindley’s colleagues at Colorado’s emergency preparedness agency. The deadly bacterium that causes tularemia — long feared as a possible biological weapon — had been detected at the convention site.

Should they order an evacuation, the state officials wondered? Send inspectors in moon suits? Distribute antibiotics? Delay or move Obama’s speech?

Another question loomed: Could they trust the source of the alert, a billion-dollar government system for detecting biological attacks known as BioWatch?

Six tense hours later, Lindley and his colleagues had reached a verdict: false alarm.

BioWatch had failed — again.

President George W. Bush announced the system’s deployment in his 2003 State of the Union address, saying it would “protect our people and our homeland.” Since then, BioWatch air samplers have been installed inconspicuously at street level and atop buildings in cities across the country — ready, in theory, to detect pathogens that cause anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, plague and other deadly diseases.

But the system has not lived up to its billing. It has repeatedly cried wolf, producing dozens of false alarms in Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

Worse, BioWatch cannot be counted on to detect a real attack, according to confidential government test results and computer modeling.

The false alarms have threatened to disrupt not only the 2008 Democratic convention, but also the 2004 and 2008 Super Bowls and the 2006 National League baseball playoffs. In 2005, a false alarm in Washington prompted officials to consider closing the National Mall.

Federal agencies documented 56 BioWatch false alarms — most of them never disclosed to the public — through 2008. More followed.

The ultimate verdict on BioWatch is that state and local health officials have shown no confidence in it. Not once have they ordered evacuations or distributed emergency medicines in response to a positive reading.

Federal officials have not established the cause of the false alarms, but scientists familiar with BioWatch say they appear to stem from its inability to distinguish between dangerous pathogens and closely related but nonlethal germs.

BioWatch has yet to face an actual biological attack. Field tests and computer modeling, however, suggest it would have difficulty detecting one.

In an attack by terrorists or a rogue state, disease organisms could well be widely dispersed, at concentrations too low to trigger BioWatch but high enough to infect thousands of people, according to scientists with knowledge of the test data who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Even in a massive release, air currents would scatter the germs in unpredictable ways. Huge numbers of air samplers would have to be deployed to reliably detect an attack in a given area, the scientists said.

Many who have worked with BioWatch — from the Army general who oversaw its initial deployment to state and local health officials who have seen its repeated failures up close — call it ill-conceived or unworkable.

“I can’t find anyone in my peer group who believes in BioWatch,” said Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment from 2002 to 2010.

“The only times it goes off, it’s wrong. I just think it’s a colossal waste of money. It’s a stupid program.”

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that would be chiefly responsible for rushing medications to the site of an attack, told White House aides at a meeting Nov. 21 that they would not do so unless a BioWatch warning was confirmed by follow-up sampling and analysis, several attendees said in interviews.

Those extra steps would undercut BioWatch’s rationale: to enable swift treatment of those exposed.

Federal officials also have shelved long-standing plans to expand the system to the nation’s airports for fear that false alarms could trigger evacuations of terminals, grounding of flights and needless panic.

BioWatch was developed by U.S. national laboratories and government contractors and is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security. Department officials insist that the system’s many alerts were not false alarms. Each time, BioWatch accurately detected some organism in the environment, even if it was not the result of an attack and posed no threat to the public, officials said.

At the same time, department officials have assured Congress that newer technology will make BioWatch more reliable and cheaper to operate.

The current samplers are vacuum-powered collection devices, about the size of an office printer, that pull air through filters that trap any airborne materials. In more than 30 cities each day, technicians collect the filters and deliver them to state or local health labs for genetic analysis. Lab personnel look for DNA matches with at least half a dozen targeted pathogens.

The new, larger units would be automated labs in a box. Samples could be analyzed far more quickly and with no need for manual collection.

Buying and operating the new technology, known as Generation 3, would cost about $3.1 billion over the next five years, on top of the roughly $1 billion that BioWatch already has cost taxpayers. The Obama administration is weighing whether to award a multiyear contract.

Generation 3 “is imperative to saving thousands of lives,” Dr. Alexander Garza, Homeland Security’s chief medical officer, told a House subcommittee on March 29.

But field and lab tests of automated units have raised doubts about their effectiveness. A prototype installed in the New York subway system in 2007 and 2008 produced multiple false readings, according to interviews with scientists. Field tests last year in Chicago found that a second prototype could not operate independently for more than a week at a time.

Most worrisome, testing at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state and at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah found that Generation 3 units could detect a biological agent only if exposed to extremely high concentrations: hundreds of thousands of organisms per cubic meter of air over a six-hour period.

Most of the pathogens targeted by BioWatch, scientists said, can cause sickness or death at much lower levels.

A confidential Homeland Security analysis prepared in January said these “failures were so significant” that the department had proposed that Northrop Grumman Corp., the leading competitor for the Generation 3 contract, make “major engineering modifications.”

A spokesman for the department, Peter Boogaard, defended the performance of BioWatch. Responding to written questions, he said the department “takes all precautions necessary to minimize the occurrence of both false positive and false negative results.”

“Rigorous testing and evaluation” will guide the department’s decisions about whether to buy the Generation 3 technology, he said.

Representatives of Northrop Grumman said in interviews that some test results had prompted efforts to improve the automated units’ sensitivity and overall performance.

“We had an issue that affected the consistency of the performance of the system,” said Dave Tilles, the company’s project director. “We resolved it. We fixed it…. We feel like we’re ready for the next phase of the program.”

In congressional testimony, officials responsible for BioWatch in both the Bush and Obama administrations have made only fleeting references to the system’s documented failures.

“BioWatch, as you know, has been an enormous success story,” Jay M. Cohen, a Homeland Security undersecretary, told a House subcommittee in 2007.

In June 2009, Homeland Security’s then-chief medical officer, Dr. Jon Krohmer, told a House panel: “Without these detectors, the nation has no ability to detect biological attacks until individuals start to show clinical symptoms.” Without BioWatch, “needless deaths” could result, he said.

Garza, the current chief medical officer, was asked during his March 29 testimony whether Generation 3 was on track. “My professional opinion is, it’s right where it needs to be,” he said.

After hearing such assurances, bipartisan majorities of Congress have unfailingly supported additional spending for BioWatch.

Olympic prototype

The problems inherent in what would become BioWatch appeared early.

In February 2002, scientists and technicians from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory deployed a prototype in and around Salt Lake City in preparation for the Winter Olympics. The scientists were aware that false alarms could “cause immense disruptions and panic” and were determined to prevent them, they later wrote in the lab’s quarterly magazine.

Sixteen air samplers were positioned at Olympic venues, as well as in downtown Salt Lake City and at the airport. About 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 12, a sample from the airport’s C concourse tested positive for anthrax.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was at an Olympic figure skating competition when the state’s public safety director, Bob Flowers, called with the news.

“He told me that they had a positive lead on anthrax at the airport,” Leavitt recalled. “I asked if they’d retested it. He said they had — not just once, but four times. And each time it tested positive.”

The Olympics marked the first major international gathering since the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner hijackings and the deadly anthrax mailings that fall.

“It didn’t take a lot of imagination to say, ‘This could be the real thing,'” Leavitt said.

But sealing off the airport would disrupt the Olympics. And “the federal government would have stopped transportation all over the country,” as it had after Sept. 11, Leavitt said.

Leavitt ordered hazardous-materials crews to stand by at the airport, though without lights and sirens or conspicuous protective gear.

“He was ready to close the airport and call the National Guard,” recalled Richard Meyer, then a federal scientist assisting with the detection technology at the Olympics.

After consulting Meyer and other officials, Leavitt decided to wait until a final round of testing was completed. By 9 p.m., when the results were negative, the governor decided not to order any further response.

“It was a false positive,” Leavitt said. “But it was a live-fire exercise, I’ll tell you that.”

Pressing ahead

The implication — that BioWatch could deliver a highly disruptive false alarm — went unheeded.

After the Olympics, Meyer and others who had worked with the air samplers attended meetings at the Pentagon, where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was building a case for rapidly deploying the technology nationwide.

On Jan. 28, 2003, Bush unveiled BioWatch in his State of the Union address, calling it “the nation’s first early-warning network of sensors to detect biological attack.”

The next month, a group of science and technology advisors to the Defense Department, including Sidney Drell, the noted Stanford University physicist, expressed surprise that “no formal study has been undertaken” of the Salt Lake City incident. The cause of that false alarm has never been identified.

“It is not realistic to undertake a nationwide, blanket deployment of biosensors,” the advisory panel, named the JASON group, concluded.

The warning was ignored in the rush to deploy BioWatch. Administration officials also disbanded a separate working group of prominent scientists with expertise in the pathogens.

That group, established by the Pentagon, had been working to determine how often certain germs appear in nature, members of the panel said in interviews. The answer would be key to avoiding false alarms. The idea was to establish a baseline to distinguish between the natural presence of disease organisms and an attack.

The failure to conduct that work has hobbled the system ever since, particularly in regard to tularemia, which has been involved in nearly all of BioWatch’s false alarms.

The bacterium that causes tularemia, or rabbit fever, got its formal name, Francisella tularensis, after being found in squirrels in the early 20th century in Central California’s Tulare County. About 200 naturally occurring infections in humans are reported every year in the U.S. The disease can be deadly but is readily curable when treated promptly with antibiotics.

Before BioWatch, scientists knew that the tularemia bacterium existed in soil and water. What the scientists who designed BioWatch did not know — because the fieldwork wasn’t done — was that nature is rife with close cousins to it.

The false alarms for tularemia appear to have been triggered by those nonlethal cousins, according to scientists with knowledge of the system.

That BioWatch is sensitive enough to register repeated false alarms but not sensitive enough to reliably detect an attack may seem contradictory. But the two tasks involve different challenges.

Any detection system is likely to encounter naturally occurring organisms like the tularemia bacterium and its cousins. Those encounters have the potential to trigger alerts unless the system can distinguish between benign organisms and harmful ones.

Detecting an attack requires a system that is not only discriminating but also highly sensitive — to guarantee that it won’t miss traces of deadly germs that might have been dispersed over a large area.

BioWatch is neither discriminating enough for the one task nor sensitive enough for the other.

The system’s inherent flaws and the missing scientific work did not slow its deployment. After Bush’s speech, the White House assigned Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Reeves, whose office was responsible for developing defenses against chemical and biological attacks, to get BioWatch up and running.

Over the previous year, Reeves had overseen placement of units similar to the BioWatch samplers throughout the Washington area, including the Pentagon, where several false alarms for anthrax and plague later occurred.

Based on that work and computer modeling of the technology’s capabilities, Reeves did not see how BioWatch could reliably detect attacks smaller than, for example, a mass-volume spraying from a crop duster.

Nevertheless, the priority was to carry out Bush’s directive, swiftly.

“In the senior-level discussions, the issue of efficacy really wasn’t on the table,” recalled Reeves, who has since retired from the Army. “It was get it done, tell the president we did good, tell the nation that they’re protected.… I thought at the time this was good PR, to calm the nation down. But an effective system? Not a chance.”

Why no illness?

It wasn’t long before there was a false alarm. Over a three-day period in October 2003, three BioWatch units detected the tularemia bacterium in Houston.

Public health officials were puzzled: The region’s hospitals were not reporting anyone sick with the disease.

Dr. Mary desVignes-Kendrick, the city’s health director, wanted to question hospital officials in detail to make sure early symptoms of tularemia were not being missed or masked by a flu outbreak. But to desVignes-Kendrick’s dismay, Homeland Security officials told her not to tell the doctors and nurses what she was looking for.

“We were hampered by how much we could share on this quote-unquote secret initiative,” she said.

After a week, it was clear that the BioWatch alarm was false.

In early 2004, on the eve of the Super Bowl in Houston, BioWatch once again signaled tularemia, desVignes-Kendrick said. The sample was from a location two blocks from Reliant Stadium, where the game was to be played Feb. 1.

DesVignes-Kendrick was skeptical but she and other officials again checked with hospitals before dismissing the warning as another false alarm. The football game was played without interruption.

Nonetheless, three weeks later, Charles E. McQueary, then Homeland Security’s undersecretary for science and technology, told a House subcommittee that BioWatch was performing flawlessly.

“I am very pleased with the manner in which BioWatch has worked,” he said. “We’ve had well over half a million samples that have been taken by those sensors. We have yet to have our first false alarm.”

Asked in an interview about that statement, McQueary said his denial of any false alarm was based on his belief that the tularemia bacterium had been detected in Houston, albeit not from an attack.

“You can’t tell the machine, ‘I only want you to detect the one that comes from a terrorist,'” he said.

Whether the Houston alarms involved actual tularemia has never been determined, but researchers later reported the presence of benign relatives of the pathogen in the metropolitan area.

Fear in the capital

In late September 2005, nearly two years after the first cluster of false alarms in Houston, analysis of filters from BioWatch units on and near the National Mall in Washington indicated the presence of tularemia. Tens of thousands of people had visited the Mall that weekend for a book festival and a protest against the Iraq War. Anyone who had been infected would need antibiotics promptly.

For days, officials from the White House and Homeland Security and other federal agencies privately discussed whether to assume the signal was another false alarm and do nothing, or quarantine the Mall and urge those who had been there to get checked for tularemia.

As they waited for further tests, federal officials decided not to alert local healthcare providers to be on the lookout for symptoms, for fear of creating a panic. Homeland Security officials now say findings from lab analysis of the filters did not meet BioWatch standards for declaring an alert.

Six days after the first results, however, CDC scientists broke ranks and began alerting hospitals and clinics. That was little help to visitors who already had left town, however.

“There were 100 people on one conference call — scientists from all over, public health officials — trying to sort out what it meant,” recalled Dr. Gregg Pane, director of Washington’s health department at the time.

Discussing the incident soon thereafter, Jeffrey Stiefel, then chief BioWatch administrator for Homeland Security, said agency officials were keenly aware that false alarms could damage the system’s credibility.

“If I tell a city that they’ve got a biological event, and it’s not a biological event, you no longer trust that system, and the system is useless,” Stiefel said on videotape at a biodefense seminar at the National Institutes of Health on Oct. 6, 2005. “It has to have a high reliability.”

Ultimately, no one turned up sick with tularemia.

Culture of silence

Homeland Security officials have said little publicly about the false positives. And, citing national security and the classification of information, they have insisted that their local counterparts remain mum as well.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County’s public health director, whose department has presided over several BioWatch false positives, referred questions to Homeland Security officials.

Dr. Takashi Wada, health officer for Pasadena from 2003 to 2010, was guarded in discussing the BioWatch false positive that occurred on his watch. Wada confirmed that the detection was made, in February 2007, but would not say where in the 23-square-mile city.

“We’ve been told not to discuss it,” he said in an interview.

Dr. Karen Relucio, medical director for the San Mateo County Health Department, acknowledged there was a false positive there in 2008, but declined to elaborate. “I’m not sure it’s OK for me to talk about that,” said Relucio, who referred further questions to officials in Washington.

In Arizona, officials kept quiet when BioWatch air samplers detected the anthrax pathogen at Super Bowl XLII in February 2008.

Nothing had turned up when technicians checked the enclosed University of Phoenix Stadium before kickoff. But airborne material collected during the first half of the game tested positive for anthrax, said Lt. Col. Jack W. Beasley Jr., chief of the Arizona National Guard’s weapons of mass destruction unit.

The Guard rushed some of the genetic material to the state’s central BioWatch lab in Phoenix for further testing. Federal and state officials convened a 2 a.m. conference call, only to be told that it was another false alarm.

Although it never made the news, the incident “caused quite a stir,” Beasley said.

The director of the state lab, Victor Waddell, said he had been instructed by Homeland Security officials not to discuss the test results. “That’s considered national security,” he said.

The dreaded call

In the months before the 2008 Democratic National Convention, local, state and federal officials planned for a worst-case event in Denver, including a biological attack.

Shortly before 9 a.m. on Aug. 28, the convention’s final day, that frightening scenario seemed to have come true. That’s when Chris Lindley, of the Colorado health department, got the phone call from a colleague, saying BioWatch had detected the tularemia pathogen at the convention site.

Lindley, an epidemiologist who had led a team of Army preventive-medicine specialists in Iraq, had faced crises, but nothing like a bioterrorism attack. Within minutes, chief medical officer Ned Calonge arrived.

Calonge had little faith in BioWatch. A couple of years earlier, the health department had been turned upside down responding to what turned out to be a false alarm for Brucella, a bacterium that primarily affects cattle, on Denver’s western outskirts.

“The idea behind BioWatch — that you could put out these ambient air filters and they would provide you with the information to save people exposed to a biological attack — it’s a concept that you could only put together in theory,” Calonge said in an interview. “It’s a poorly conceived strategy for doing early detection that is inherently going to pick up false positives.”

Lindley and his team arranged a conference call with scores of officials, including representatives from Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Secret Service and the White House.

None of the BioWatch samplers operated by the state had registered a positive, and no unusual cases of infection appeared to have been diagnosed at area hospitals, Lindley said.

The alert had come from a Secret Service-installed sampler on the grounds of the arena where the convention was taking place. The unit was next to an area filled with satellite trucks broadcasting live news reports on the Democratic gathering. Soon, thousands of conventioneers would be walking from Pepsi Center to nearby Invesco Field to hear Obama’s acceptance speech.

Had Lindley and Calonge been asked, they said in interviews, they wouldn’t have put the BioWatch unit at this spot, where foot and vehicle traffic could stir up dust and contaminants that might set off a false alarm. As it turned out, a shade tree 12 yards from the sampler had attracted squirrels, potential carriers of tularemia.

The location near the media trailers posed another problem: how to conduct additional tests without setting off a panic.

EPA officials “said on the phone, ‘We have a team standing by, ready to go,'” Lindley recalled. But the technicians would have to wear elaborate protective gear.

The sight of emergency responders in moon suits “would have derailed the convention,” Calonge said.

…

Find this story at 7 July 2012

By David Willman, Los Angeles Times

July 7, 2012Advertisement

david.willman@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

New report examines the composition of DG Enterprise and Industry expert groups. Among its findings, the shocking conclusion that there are 482 corporate lobbyists versus only 11 union representatives.

Industry experts and corporate lobbyists have effectively captured key areas of policy advice within the European Commission, according to new research carried out by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) launched today at a joint event with the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) and the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour [1].

The study finds that two thirds of all of DG Enterprise’s non-governmental advisory groups are dominated by big business interests [2] with some 482 corporate advisors influencing key areas of policy, such as international trade, consumer protection, food and aspects of environmental protection.

In contrast, the interests of small and medium-sized enterprises have little opportunity to influence policy decisions through advisory groups, accounting for just 5% of the total non-governmental representatives. Representatives from NGOs (non-governmental organisations) account for just 8%, and unions for 1%.

The Commission’s advisory groups provide specialist advice on policy issues and their work can form the backbone of new legislation. The European Parliament has previously criticised the Commission for engaging more with big business than with any other social group through these advisory groups.

ALTER-EU argues that allowing big companies’ interests to dominate risks that the interests of these companies are given greater priority than the public interest. It also criticises the Commission’s own rules on expert groups which stress that “Commission services shall, as far as possible, ensure a balanced representation”.

One of the report authors, Yiorgos Vassalos from ALTER-EU, said:

“DG Enterprise seems to have become the champion of big business in the Commission. Their dominance in expert groups is providing business with privileged access to influence the policy agenda, while other interests do not have a similar voice. As a result there is a very real risk that industry lobbyists may capture whole areas of policy making at the European level, to the detriment of wider society.”

Oliver Roepke from the Austrian Trade Union Federation said:

“DG Enterprise seems to have forgotten that employees and workers are at the heart of the European economy. Their expertise and experience should also lie at the heart of policy making. Far too often we see DG Enterprise working with transnational corporations which have no interest in protecting jobs and decent living standards in Europe. This one-sided policy-making must be reformed.” [suggestion only – to be amended]

ALTER-EU is calling on the Commission to make major changes in the composition of its advisory groups to ensure that the public interest is properly served. It also calls on the Commission to implement the European Parliament’s demands and introduce safeguards against corporate capture of expert groups.

Contacts:

Yiorgos Vassalos, ALTER-EU, phone: 32-484675162 and email: yiorgos@corporateeurope.org

Paul de Clerck, ALTER-EU, phone: 32-494380959 and email: paul@milieudefensie.nl

Notes:

[1] Who’s driving the agenda at DG Enterprise and Industry? ALTER-EU, July 2012, see: http://www.alter-eu.org/sites/default/files/documents/DGENTR-driving.pdf

[2] The report authors defined that a group is dominated by a certain interest if that interest has more than half of the non-government seats.

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) is a coalition of over 200 civil society groups, trade unions, academics and public affairs firms concerned with the increasing influence exerted by corporate lobbyists on the political agenda in Europe, the resulting loss of democracy in EU decision-making and the postponement, weakening, or blockage even, of urgently needed progress on social, environmental and consumer-protection reforms.
DGENTR-driving.pdf
Campaign:
Balanced expert groups

Publication date:
Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Press release issued by:
The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)

Find the report at

Recently, the head of the UK branch of G4S, the largest private security firm in the world, predicted that within the next few years an increasing amount police work will be allocated and outsourced to private security companies – like G4S.

The comments were made by the director of the UK led private security firm, off the back of G4S having secured lucrative contracts to carry out policing duties on behalf of West Midlands and Surrey police – and ultimately the taxpayer.

One of the immediate criticisms raised at this prospect was of the need for all individuals contracted to carry out police duties to be held equally accountable to the IPCC (Independent police complaints commission) – at present this will not the case.

G4S are also set to have a massive presence at this year’s Olympic Games, with around 13,000 staff allocated for the games which are set to begin in a couple of weeks time. Mainstream news reports have described the makeup of east London as looking increasingly more like an occupied military zone rather than the sight for one of the greatest spectacles on Earth. Coincidentally, we are talking about the same G4S that carries out duties for the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Despite concerns raised over the last couple of days regarding the ability of G4S to deliver, the Home Secretary Theresa May today maintained that the Olympic games were safe to go ahead and that london is prepared.

Indeed, the security giant looks likely to secure lucrative contracts to undergo outsourced work on behalf of the NHS, and the police, and post Olympics, and does not look likely to be struggling for work, to put it politely.

Police forces across the country, as well as suffering from acute levels of public skepticism, and diminishing resources, will be headed by a company, driven by profit margins at the behest of our government.

Although according to government this is of course done in the name of efficiency and cost effectiveness, one might say that there is a direct conflict of interest. If we were to make any predictions as to how this were to translate into reality, looking at how the police, immigration officials, and prisons which have been privatised are operating in the US, and the resulting criticisms that have been leveled at them, we ought to surely be concerned.

Incidentally, here in the UK, we have already emulated the private prison system, with several currently outsourced to private companies.

In addition to the news that the police along with our other institutions, will now be further privatised and sold off, we have also had to digest the added revelation that we are likely to see an even greater drop in police numbers in the years leading up to 2015.

If alarm bells were not already ringing as a result of the fragility of the relationship between the police and the public, then they should be now.

There is no reason to believe that this will have a beneficial effect on the level of service provided. Or put another way, there is no evidence to suggest that in the long run this will benefit society. On the contrary many are voicing concerns saying the opposite; A climate under which it becomes more profitable to imprison people than to educate them, is not something we want. We only have to look across the pond to realise that.

Equally, the likes of G4S, securing the Olympics and carrying out increasingly more and more police duties holds just as many legitimate concerns.

As was revealed in a recent report, the extent to which some of the private companies awarded contracts to kickstart the coalition governments ‘work programme’ sought to actually cut the number of claimants claiming benefits- including G4S – was shockingly high. Many are concerned that they are more focused on cutting the number of benefit claimants, rather than actually getting people back to work.

Many groups and activists concerned about G4S have been trying to raise awareness and scrutinize G4S for many years, but in recent months and especially in the aftermath of the death of Jimmy Mubenga, which for many after a long list of incidents which brought into sharp focus the prospect of criminal charges being sought for possible criminal behaviour by G4S, that scrutiny has increased – and with good reason. Whether the staff that held Mubenga in their custody will now face criminal charges remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the company itself will face criminal charges of manslaughter.

Just like the last New Labour government, which designated the contract for our census data to be gathered to Lockheed Martin, the arms manufacturer, with many other impressive titles to its name to boot, this coalition hasn’t flinched from its predictable ideological course, in shipping the important work of our already stretched institutions, over to private companies, and the reality is that we are poised to see more of the same. The fact that one of the big beneficiaries of this, has massive question marks hanging over it says much about our government’s willingness to ship out anything to the highest bidder, irrespective of the spin, which justifies such decision making in the name of cost effectiveness and efficiency. The question really, is what’s coming next.

Meanwhile the Olympics are awaited with bated breath from many and for many reasons. For sports lovers it’s the chance to enjoy the games the chance to inspire young people. For many police officers, the circumstances surrounding the Olympics, are just inviting the kind of scenes and trouble that we saw last year, possibly further rioting. Private companies, just like the big multinationals that go in to rebuild a destroyed infrastructure after a war, are poised to get rich either way.

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Richard Sudan
Notebook – A selection of Independent views -, Opinion
Friday, 13 July 2012 at 12:00 am

Army called upon to fill Games security shortfall
Fears G4S may even fail to meet reduced target
MP accuses firm – who were paid £284m – of letting the country down

The security firm G4S was reportedly paid a staggering £284million to provide up to 17,500 personnel for the 2012 Games.

But yesterday, in a major humiliation for company bosses and Olympic organisers, it admitted it would fall well short of the target, forcing ministers to pull in thousands of military personnel.

The company was contracted to provide a minimum of 15,400 security staff, with a target of 17,500.

Yesterday, as the Government confirmed the call-up of 3,500 extra troops, G4S claimed it would be able to bring in 13,800.

However, with 14 days to go to the Games, question marks remained whether it would meet even that target, as just a small fraction of that total is available for deployment. Only 4,000 are ‘boots on the ground’, working as ticket checkers and bag searchers at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London.

Another 9,000 are still in the training and vetting process – raising fears even the more reduced target might not be achievable.

The Armed Forces now make up the overwhelming majority of the security staff likely to be deployed during the Games.

The original plan for 7,500 military is bolstered by a special contingent of 5,000, plus the 3,500 announced on Tuesday, making a total of 16,000. In addition, there will be 3,000 unpaid volunteers.

The number of staff needed to guard the Olympic venues more than doubled last December after the organising committee Locog wildly underestimated the total required. Originally Locog contracted G4S to provide 2,000 security guards, but in December the firm agreed to increase that number massively.

Yesterday Downing Street insisted there would be financial penalties for the firm for failing to meet the contract. But Locog refused to comment on the nature of any fines, claiming it would breach commercial confidentiality. That is despite taxpayers coughing up at least £9billion for the cost of the Games.

Insiders said the company had repeatedly claimed until last week that it would meet its obligations.

A Whitehall source accused the firm of ‘abysmal’ failure and said it had delayed completing training and vetting processes to save money by not having too many staff on the books before the start of the Games.

The source said: ‘Until yesterday officials from G4S were turning up and assuring us that the figures were getting better and going to be OK.

‘Then we learn there’s not as many as we need. They didn’t want to be throwing money at the problem six months ago because their staff would be sitting around doing nothing.’

Home Secretary Theresa May was hauled to the House of Commons to try to explain the shortfall.

She insisted: ‘There is no question of Olympic security being compromised.’

But Labour MP Keith Vaz, who called for the emergency statement, said: ‘G4S has let the country down and we have literally had to send in the troops.’

Mr Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, has written to Nick Buckles, chief executive of G4S, demanding he give evidence before MPs next week.

The debacle is the latest blow to the reputation of G4S which, while relatively unknown to the public, is one of the world’s biggest security companies.

In recent years its tentacles have extended into swathes of British life which used to be the preserve of the public sector, including running prisons and police custody suites.

From headquarters in Crawley, Sussex, company bosses run a sprawling multinational company with interests in more than 125 countries.

They provide security at Heathrow and other major airports, and for vans transporting cash on behalf of banks and other financial institutions.

Under its previous name Group4Security it had a contract for transporting prisoners, but in 2004 the company ‘lost’ two prisoners, sparking a major investigation.

It runs six jails in the UK including Birmingham, where an inspection report in October 2011 said drugs were regularly being thrown over the prison walls.

Three G4S guards are on police bail over the death in October 2010 of Angolan national Jimmy Mubenga, who was restrained while being deported from the country.

…

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Jack Doyle

PUBLISHED: 22:39 GMT, 12 July 2012 | UPDATED: 10:30 GMT, 13 July 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

The depth of the crisis over G4S’s Olympic security preparations became increasingly clear on Thursday as recruits revealed details of a “totally chaotic” selection process and police joined the military in bracing themselves to fill the void left by the private security contractor.

Guards told how, with 14 days to go until the Olympics opening ceremony, they had received no schedules, uniforms or training on x-ray machines. Others said they had been allocated to venues hundreds of miles from where they lived, been sent rotas intended for other employees, and offered shifts after they had failed G4S’s own vetting.

The West Midlands Police Federation reported that its officers were being prepared to guard the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, which will host the football tournament, amid concerns G4S would not be able to cover the security requirements.

“We have to find officers until the army arrives and we don’t know where we are going to find them from,” said Chris Jones, secretary of the federation.

G4S has got a £284m contract to provide 13,700 guards, but only has 4,000 in place. It says a further 9,000 are in the pipeline.

G4S sent an urgent request on Thursday to retired police asking them to help. A memo to the National Association of Retired Police Officers said: “G4S Policing Solutions are currently and urgently recruiting for extra support for the Olympics. These are immediate starts with this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday available. We require ex-police officers ideally with some level of security clearance and with a Security Industry Association [accreditation], however neither is compulsory.”

Robert Brown, a former police sergeant, told the Guardian that he pulled out of the recruitment process for the Games after seeing it close at hand.

He said: “They were trying to process hundreds of people and we had to fill out endless forms. It was totally chaotic and it was obvious to me that this was being done too quickly and too late.”

Another G4S trainee, an ex-policeman, described the process as “an utter farce”.

He added: “There were people who couldn’t spell their own name. The staff were having to help them. Most people hadn’t filled in their application forms correctly. Some didn’t know what references were and others said they didn’t have anyone who could act as a referee. The G4S people were having to prompt them, saying things like “what about your uncle?”

Tim Steward, a former prison officer, said he was recruited by G4S in March as a team leader but said he would not be working at the Games because of a series of blunders.

Steward said he provided documentation for vetting but G4S had said it did not have the information on record and so closed his file. The security firm then offered him a training session at short notice, which he could not attend, but it did not offer an alternative.

A recruit who was interviewed in March and completed training last month, said: “There are people like me that are vetted and trained in security and would be happy to work, but can’t. Some of the classes were of around 200 in size with only two trainers accommodating the training for a class of this size.

“I am yet to hear from G4S regarding my screening, accreditation, uniform or even a rough start date. I know many people also who will be commencing work on 27 July who have had absolutely no scheduled on-site training. They are simply being chucked into their role on x-ray machines, public screening areas and even athlete screening areas.”

Another guard who has been trained as an x-ray operator, complained that he was unable to get through to G4S to find out when and where he was meant to be working, and was once left on hold on the phone for 38 minutes.

One student applicant said he had already spent £650 on travel and hotel bills to attend training and was now worried that, because he had not received any accreditation or rota from G4S, he might not be given the shifts that would enable him to cover those costs. He said he had expected to earn about £2,000 over the period of the Games.

G4S’s own Facebook page for new recruits is littered with similar complaints.

“They’ve placed me in Manchester and I want to work in London,” wrote Glenn Roseman. “Some idiot has changed my location, I’m never going to get any work now.”

Christian Smith complained: “I did the training course, passed, and got my own security industry association licence, only to fail G4S vetting. Two days after I got their letter, they rang me, and asked me what days I could work.”

…

Find this story at 13 July 2012 

Recruits tell of chaos over schedules, uniforms and training while ex-police officers asked to help out
Robert Booth and Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Friday 13 July 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Im Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) sind nicht nur am 11.11.2011 V-Mann Akten mit Bezug zur rechtsextremen Szene vernichtet worden, sondern auch noch einige Tage danach. Das geht nach MONITOR-Informationen aus einem aktualisierten Schreiben des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz an das Bundesministerium des Inneren hervor. Deshalb wurde das Disziplinarverfahren gegen den zuständigen Referatsleiter ausgedehnt mit dem so wörtlich „Vorwurf, eine zweite rechtswidrige Aktenvernichtung ( ohne vorherige Prüfung der Akten) vorsätzlich veranlasst zu haben (..)“ Dazu erklärt das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz gegenüber „Monitor“: Es seien 7 Operativakten in zwei zeitlich voneinander getrennten Schritten vernichtet worden.“

Dass es eine zweite Aktenvernichtung gegeben hat, hatte dem Schreiben zufolge ein BfV Mitarbeiter ausgesagt: Danach habe er „einige Tage nach dem 11.11. einen weiteren Aktenordner zufällig in der Aktenverwaltung gefunden.“ Der damit konfrontierte vorgesetzte Beamte habe „nach kurzem Durchblättern“, so der Zeuge, „sogleich dessen Vernichtung angeordnet.“

Über die anstehende Vernichtung von Akten waren offensichtlich viele Mitarbeiter im Verfassungsschutz informiert. Der zuständige Referatsleiter hatte per E-Mail nicht nur alle Mitarbeiter des Referats 2B unterrichtet, sondern auch seinen vorgesetzten Gruppenleiter, heißt es in dem Bericht. Der inzwischen zurückgetretene Verfassungsschutzpräsident Fromm hatte am 8.11. 2011 angeordnet, alle Unterlagen auf einen Zusammenhang mit den mutmaßlichen NSU–Terroristen Bönhardt, Zschäpe und Mundlos zu untersuchen.

Find this story at 12 July 2012

Find the program at 12 July 2012

Pressemeldung vom 12.07.2012:

Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz

Secret documents reveal British intelligence concerns and raise damaging questions about UK’s targeting of Gaddafi opponents
Britain already faces legal action over its involvement in the plot to seize Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who is now the military commander in Tripoli. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

British intelligence believes the capture and rendition of two top Libyan rebel commanders, carried out with the involvement of MI6, strengthened al-Qaida and helped groups attacking British forces in Iraq, secret documents reveal.

The papers, discovered in the British ambassador’s abandoned residence in Tripoli, raise new and damaging questions over Britain’s role in the seizure and torture of key opponents of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Britain is already facing legal actions over its involvement in the plot to seize Abdul Hakim Belhaj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who is now the military commander in Tripoli, and his deputy, Sami al-Saadi. Both men say they were tortured and jailed after being handed over to Gaddafi.

The documents reveal that British intelligence believe the pair’s rendition boosted al-Qaida by removing more moderate elements from the insurgency’s leadership. This allowed extremists to push “a relatively close-knit group” focused on overthrowing Gaddafi into joining the pan-Islamist terror network.

One document, headed “UK/Libya eyes only – Secret”, showed the security services had monitored LIFG members since their arrival in Britain following a failed attempt to kill Gaddafi in 1996, and understood their aim was the replacement of his regime with an Islamic state.

The briefing paper, prepared by the security service for a four-day MI5 visit in February 2005, said that following the seizure of its two key leaders the year before the group had been cast into a state of disarray.

“The extremists are now in the ascendancy,” the paper said, and they were “pushing the group towards a more pan-Islamic agenda inspired by AQ [al-Qaida]”.

Their “broadened” goals, it continued, were now also the destabilisation of Arab governments that were not following sharia law and the liberation of Muslim territories occupied by the west.

The 58-page document, which included names, photographs and detailed biographies of a dozen alleged LIFG members in the UK, went on to highlight “conclusions of concern” in the light of these changes.

These included the sending of money and false documents to a contact in Iran to help smuggle fighters into Iraq, where British and US forces were coming under fierce attack. “UK members have long enjoyed a reputation as the best suppliers of false documents in the worldwide extremist community,” said the report. It added that British LIFG members were becoming “increasingly ambitious” at fundraising through fast-food restaurants, fraud, property and car dealing, and raised nearly all the money for the group outside of Libya.British security also asked Gaddafi’s security forces for access to detainees and their debriefs.

Asked about the document, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “It is the government’s longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters.”

The LIFG eventually merged with al-Qaida in 2007. However, a second document, a secret update on Libyan extremist networks in the UK from August 2008, says the response of British members was “subdued and mixed”.

It concluded that those already supporting the wider aims of al-Qaida continued to do so, but “those with reservations retain their focus on Libya”. It added, however, that some money raised by members in Manchester may have gone to “assist operational activity”.

The cache of confidential documents – which included private letters to Gaddafi from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and key Downing Street aides – was abandoned when the three-story residence was attacked by Gaddafi loyalists in April. .

There was also a dossier prepared by British intelligence with suggested questions for the captured men. The 39-page document, entitled Briefs for Detainees and labelled “UK Secret” on each page, was written in three sections in March, June and October 2004.

The first section is dated the month of Belhaj’s arrest, and sought answers on everything from his private life to his military training, activities in Afghanistan and links to al-Qaida. There were also personalised questions for Saadi.

The LIFG, founded by veterans of the mujahideen’s war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was for many years the most serious internal threat to Gaddafi, coming close to blowing up the dictator with a car bomb in his home town of Sirte in 1996. The government denied claims by David Shayler, the renegade British spy, that this assassination attempt was funded by British intelligence.

After Gaddafi’s clampdown on the group, dozens of dissidents were allowed to settle in Britain. London only designated the LIFG a terrorist organisation after Libya said it was abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003. The move is understood to have been agreed as part of the negotiations with Gaddafi’s regime that paved the way to the controversial Blair deal.

Belhaj, now a key figure in liberated Libya, is preparing to sue Britain after other documents discovered in the wake of Gaddafi’s fall indicated that MI6 assisted in his rendition to torture and brutal treatment from the CIA and Gaddafi’s regime.

MI6 informed the CIA of his whereabouts after his associates told British diplomats in Malaysia he wanted to claim asylum in Britain.

He was allowed to board a flight to London, then abducted when his aircraft landed at Bangkok.

…

Find this story at 24 October 2011 

Ian Birrell
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 October 2011 20.28 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Committee says there are questions about whether agencies should have been able to anticipate how events might unfold
Britain’s intelligence agencies were surprised by the Arab spring, and their failure to realise unrest would spread so rapidly may reveal a lack of understanding of the region, according to the parliamentary body set up to scrutinise their activities.

A particularly sharp passage of the intelligence and security committee’s (ISC) report describes as “ill-considered” an attempt by MI6 to smuggle into Libya two officers who were promptly seized by rebels.

The report says that at the time the Arab spring erupted, both MI6 and GCHQ, the government’s electronic eavesdropping centre, were cutting resources devoted to Arab countries.

The criticism of MI6’s attitude is all the more significant given the agency’s traditional close ties with the Arab world.

The ISC, chaired by the former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, said it was understandable that the intelligence agencies were taken by surprise, “as indeed were the governments in the countries affected”.

However, it said there were questions about whether the agencies “should have been able to anticipate how events might subsequently unfold, and whether the fact that they did not realise that the unrest would spread so rapidly across the Arab world demonstrates a lack of understanding about the region”.

SAS troops escorted MI6 officers to Libya in a Chinook helicopter and dropped them off at a desert location south of Benghazi in the middle of the night in March 2011. The mission was an embarrassment to the British government and the anti-Gaddafi rebels alike. MI6 “misjudged the nature and level of risk involved”, the ISC said.

It noted that the lessons had been taken seriously by MI6, and added: “We would have expected nothing less.” The incident “demonstrates a lack of operational planning that we would not have expected from [MI6]and other participants”, it said.

Cuts being made in Whitehall’s defence intelligence staff mean greater risks would have to be taken “when reacting to the next crisis than was the case with the Libya campaign”, the ISC warned. It said GCHQ’s difficulties in retaining internet and cyber specialists attracted by higher salaries in the private sector was a matter of grave concern.

The report said Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, had told the ISC there had been “very considerable erosion of al-Qaida’s senior leadership capability in Pakistan, and to some extent now in Yemen, as a result of drone strikes”.

Al-Qaida had to spend a lot of its time trying to protect itself, Evans was quoted as saying. “It is much more difficult to take action if you are permanently in fear that you are going to be attacked. I think that has had a strategic impact on al-Qaida’s senior leadership.”

The ISC said British intelligence agencies were now concerned that al-Qaida in Iraq “may gain a lasting foothold in Syria if there is a prolonged power vacuum, and also at the prospect of Syrian conventional and chemical weapons stockpiles falling into the hands of terrorist groups”.

…

Find this story at 12 july 2012

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 July 2012 17.26 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.